Caffarelli did not rise to the height of his fame rapidly, and, when
he went to London to supply the place of Farinelli in 1738, he entirely
failed to please the English public, who had gone wild with enthusiasm
over his predecessor. Farinelli's retirement from the artistic world
about this period removed from Caffarelli's way the only rival who could
have snatched from him the laurels he soon acquired as the leading
male singer of the age. After Caffarelli's return from England, his
engagements in Turin, Genoa, Milan, and Florence were a triumphal
progress. At Turin he sang before the Prince and Princess of Sardinia,
the latter of whom had been a pupil of Farinelli, as she was a Spanish
princess. Caffarelli, on being told that the royal lady had a prejudice
in favor of her old master, said haughtily, "To-night she shall hear
two Farinellis in one," and exerted his faculties so successfully as
to produce acclamations of delight and astonishment. He always seems
to have had great jealousy of the fame of Farinelli, and the latter
entertained much curiosity about his successor in public esteem.
Metas-tasio, the friend of the retired artist, wrote to him in 1749 from
Vienna about Caffarelli's reception: "You will be curious to know
how Caffarelli has been received. The wonders related of him by his
adherents had excited expectations of something above humanity." After
summing up the judgments of the critics who were severe on Caffarelli's
faults, that his voice was "false, screaming, and disobedient," that
his singing was full of "antique and stale flourishes," that "in his
recitative he was an old nun," and that in all that he sang there was
"a whimsical tone of lamentation sufficient to sour the gayest allegro,"
Metastasio says that in his happy moments he could please excessively,
but the caprices of his voice and temper made these happy moments very
uncertain.

Caffarelli's arrogant, vain, and turbulent nature seems to have been the